Why is Hazel Chu committing political hara-kiri? The Green Party councillor and lord mayor of Dublin has conceded she has no hope of getting enough votes to win the Seanad by-election that she is contesting as an independent candidate. In truth, the odds of her taking the seat are even bleaker than Boris Johnson’s chances of taking the crown for Loveliest Lockdown Locks.
As she is the Greens’ chairwoman, Chu’s appearance on the ballot papers issued last Thursday to the electorate of 218 sitting TDs and senators was seen by some as a reckless personal vanity project and by others as a treacherous suicide-bombing mission targeting her own party. To politicians of various hues in Leinster House, the junior government party is showing its true colours as a happy-clappy band of flaky lentil-knitters engrossed in rewilding themselves. They have already sustained damage, following their parliamentary party’s majority decision to ask Chu to step aside from the chair until the end of the by-election. She refused, having taken legal advice, thus forcing the executive committee to try to resolve the stand-off.
Much of the public commentary on the saga has concentrated on its repercussions for government stability, over what an Irish Times editorial snootily dismissed as “petty internal squabbling”. Watching from the outside, the smallest of the three government parties looks irreparably riven into two distinct factions. One is led by the party leader, Eamon Ryan, who says Green TDs and senators must vote for the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael candidates in the two Seanad by-elections; and the other is headed by the deputy leader, Catherine Martin, who signed Chu’s nomination papers.
Chu and her supporters insist the Greens have no electoral pact with their government partners and are, therefore, free to support candidates of their choosing. As other Greens who proposed Chu’s candidacy include Martin’s TD husband, Francis Noel Duffy, and her senator brother, Vincent P Martin, as well as Chu’s TD partner, Patrick Costello, a nepotistic whiff emanates from the rebel camp.
These, though, are merely superficial characteristics, obscuring the real and serious problems rattling the very roots of the Green Party. They are also a distraction from Chu’s stated motivation for standing in the Seanad by-election as an independent candidate. A daughter of Chinese immigrants who has been subjected to racist vitriol, she is contesting the election for the sake of diversity. Were she not on the ballot paper, it would consist solely of white men.
Advertisement
The true fault lines of the Greens’ current dilemma are not about dynastic power building or individual self-promotion. They arise from clashing ideologies and a perception that the party, which has lost a procession of prominent female members in the past year, preaches one thing about equality but practises quite another.
Many of Chu’s supporters were reluctant to enter government last summer, fearing the party would be sucked into supporting legislation they found anathema. Saoirse McHugh, who rose to prominence as a European parliament candidate in Midlands North-West, was among those who quit the party. Just one month after the government was formed, Joe O’Brien, a junior minister, and Neasa Hourigan, then the Greens’ whip, refused to vote for the government’s Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill and were duly punished by the party.
Ryan’s decision not to give a junior ministry to Hourigan, the party’s finance spokeswoman and one of its two chief negotiators for the programme for government, rankled some members, particularly female ones, as she is one of just two women in the Greens’ 12 TDs.
Hourigan and Costello have said they will not vote for Ceta, the EU’s trade agreement with Canada which the party previously opposed, if it comes before the Dail in its present form. Ryan maintains Ceta has been adequately amended and that the party should now back it, but Costello has initiated a High Court challenge. Una Power, the Green Party chairwoman of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown county council, has said she will quit if her party backs Ceta in the Oireachtas.
Ryan cannot afford to keep losing women from the ranks. Lorna Bogue, a high-profile Cork councillor, left in October in protest against the sealing of records gathered by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission for 30 years. The legislation was proposed by Roderic O’Gorman, the Greens’ minister for children. Tara Gilsenan, who chairs the Young Greens, also departed, citing the sealing of the records, a “lacklustre climate bill” and “voting against our own policies” in government.
Advertisement
Chu has had her share of frustration. She wanted to stand in last year’s general election for the Dail, which would have meant sharing the party ticket with Ryan in the Dublin Bay South constituency. It is arguable whether a two-candidate ticket would have boosted the party’s performance or split its vote, but her subsequent failure to obtain a nomination for the Seanad election caused further ripples of discontent. Such was the disquiet over the selection procedure that Eva Dowling, a party member who stood in those elections as an independent and is now the junior minister Ossian Smyth’s special adviser, demanded an inquiry. That has yet to be completed.
Next, Chu failed to acquire one of the taoiseach’s 11 nominations to the Seanad. Last month, when the Greens decided not to contest the two Seanad by-elections, was her third failed attempt to get an endorsement.
While both sides have good arguments in the internal debate about whether to focus ruthlessly on environmental policy gains or to try to spread them over social justice issues too, the simplistic commentary about Chu’s candidacy has been alarmingly gender-blinkered. She is being painted as a selfish upstart. The tone of criticism echoes the near-consensus tut-tutting that greeted Catherine Martin’s challenge to Ryan for the leadership. Wise heads solemnly pronounced that she should be grateful for Ryan’s long, lonely years of graft to rehabilitate the party after its crushing losses in the 2011 general election. Few seemed to think it worth mentioning that, throughout Ryan’s ten years as leader, Martin has been working beside him as deputy leader.
There is no doubt the Greens, who have been beset with claims of bullying within, have a woman problem. They also have a race and culture diversity deficit. Ten of the party’s 12 TDs are male. Seven of the 12 are based in Dublin, including the country’s three most affluent constituencies. These monochromatic demographics matter for a party that fancies itself as progressive and tolerant. Chu, who has won admiration for standing up to racist abusers, should be its marketing trump card.
If they want to stick together and do a full term in government in order to achieve their ambitions for the planet, the Greens need to start addressing their deep-rooted problems. Yesterday’s decision to conduct a review they had already promised to undertake does not inspire confidence.
